Does economic growth reduce fertility?

PTIAug 12, 2007, 12.42pm IST

NEW DELHI: Richer, more developed economies tend to have lower fertility rates than poorer less developed ones. Over time many formerly poor countries have begun to develop and this process of development has typically been accompanied by sustained fertility declines, says a new book.

The rapid economic growth enjoyed by India in the period since 1999 has continued to alter the nature of economic relations and thus is likely to further impact the decisions that parents make regarding child bearing, says a paper in "India Policy Forum", 2006/2007.

Rural India over the last three decades can provide the appropriate setting for carrying out such an analysis and as figures show, there was pronounced decline in fertility across all groups in the 1982-1999 while there was relatively limited change in fertility between 1971- and 1982, say Andrew D Foster, Brown University and Mark R Resonzweig of Yale University in their research paper. The volume has been published by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER).

Given sustained economic growth that continues to raise wages and increase returns to human capital, the fall in fertility in India will continue for the foreseeable future, the paper says.

The authors say there are, of course, important anomalies such as China, with its one-child policy, and countries like Cuba, Costa Rica and Sri Lanka with traditionally high levels of education, health and correspondingly low levels of fertility. There is also evidence that the timing of a first sustained decline in fertility is not well-connected with a particular level or threshold of economic development, they say.

Nonetheless, there is a significant literature that link economic growth and fertility decline and, on the whole, these results are supporting, the authors say. They note that prominence given to maternal education was also a source of fertility decline in India.

On aggregate fall in rural fertility observed between 1982 and 1999, citing figures, the authors say that of the 46 per cent decline in period fertility only 3.4 per cent could be attributed to the growth of health centres in the rural areas. The authors point out that during this period he alth centre coverage in the rural areas increased by less than ten percentage points.

The green revolution, along with other economic changes that were partly responsive to the increased growth and occupational diversification led to expansion of labour demand. The resulting rise in wages not only made child-rearing more expensive but shifted the nature of women's activities both within and outside the household. As a result patterns emerged that mark a fundamental change in women's autonomy, they say.

The analysis by the authors suggests that the areas of high agricultural productivity growth not only experience decline in fertility but also increases in the schooling of children and in the time devoted by married women to non-household work. It also suggests that aggregate wage changes in dominated by increase in the value of female wages explain 15 per cent of the decline in fertility over the 1982-99 period.